Stolen Time
by Lupin's Mistress
Summary: “What would you do if I did kiss you?” I whispered.“Kiss you back, perhaps, Imy,” He whispered back. I rubbed my thumb against his cheek; he leaned into my hand like a dog wanting to be pet by its master. One-Shot, Sirius/OC, summary inside.


**Author's Note: **This was a plot bunny that just couldn't stop nagging me, so I finally wrote it even though I should have been working on finishing my ficlet but whatever. So I think that is all I have to say just enjoy.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of the characters that are recognizable but I do own the plot and possibly Imy.

**Summary: **Imy was supposed to be perfect, that was how she was regarded, as perfect but when she falls in love she starts to realize that the role of perfection isn't all that everyone thinks it is, especially since she considers falling in love with her best friend a tragedy.

**STOLEN TIME **

To the world I was perfect, the girl that sat back and watched with amusement as the marauders concocted another plan, the one that often got them out of messes, sneaked them out of detention with poisoned apples—a rendition of Snow White or so Sirius had claimed. I had the perfect marks in every class not including Divination and Ancient Runes, what did you need those classes for? That's what James and I had said when we discovered they would not be part of our schedules after the terrible grades we managed to get in both of them but that was perhaps due to the fact that James couldn't help throwing notes at me to describe the beauty that was Lily Evans. She was beautiful, I will admit, and also one of my friends. The reason for James' notes, to possibly get me to set them up; too bad Lily hated his guts. But, see, the thing was that I wasn't perfect, even if the world imagined I was. I was far from perfect.

I think everyone suffers stereotypes. I suffered the role of perfection. If anyone ever saw me go out of this role it was as if pigs were flying, but that isn't even something that wouldn't happen. Once in third year when I mentioned the phrase, Sirius decided it would be funny to let seven pigs fly around the great hall, seven for the seven different years, he had explained, the explanation had still landed him in detention. The phrase was never mentioned again. McGonagall had a strange sense of humor and had made him clean a pig's sty, literally.

So it was because of this that I never tried to go out of my norm. I tried hard to keep my grades the same, to remain as popular as I was, to remain the best friend to the marauders but maybe I underestimated emotion and the fact that sometimes people do fall in love, and maybe had I not fallen for him things could have remained normal but what did I know about normal.

I met Sirius Black at the age of seven. My mother was James Potter's Aunt, James was my cousin and I often went over to James' house. His father, my uncle had for some reason wound up agreeing to take care of Sirius for the day. Maybe his parents had, had a delirious moment, or possibly someone other than his parents had given him to my Aunt and Uncle, but nevertheless, at the age of seven James and Sirius became best friends and I met the boy that I would learn to love in the upcoming years.

He was a trouble-maker even then. Mrs. Potter nearly tumbled down the stairs because of him that day, we were all thankful that Mr. Potter was there to catch her. Sirius had gotten told off for that but it hadn't stopped him from later putting glue in James' hair and "accidentally" spilling milk on my head. Regardless of all these incidents we all loved him just the way he was. James had found his soul mate in a way; the two of them understood each other too well and already I had known they would be inseparable. To Mr. and Mrs. Potter he was too cute to be ignored, adorable, they had called him. At the time, and even now, I guess, I was simply quite amused by him. We were a trio starting that day; Sirius was nearly always at the Potters as was I. They had the time to look after the three of us while our parents worked so as time went on we became inseparable.

Peter became part of the group next, moving into a house down the street from James', we had invited him to play along, ignoring at the time the fact that he could have been a muggle. At the age of eight we wouldn't have cared less, all we wanted was another playmate, a fourth to our trio.

A shy boy, Peter was my first crush. He was the kind of guy that in his own quiet way helped you out even if most of the time he was a klutz about it. He was also terribly funny; some of the things he said sent me into tirades of laughter. Sirius, if I remember clearly, was always wary of Peter, always annoyed about the fact that he was according to him "slowing us down", but in many ways we were beginning to see how different we were. While James and Sirius remained the trouble makers, I was beginning to see a different side to everything. I no longer wanted to play in the mud with a bunch of boys. Peter was always a follower; he didn't care what we did. I have no doubt in my mind that if I had asked him to play with dolls with me he would have done it.

By the time that we turned eleven Sirius, James, and Peter had become a trio, my interests had turned away from them and instead turned to books and learning, but still from time to time I was found with the three boys, laughing about the beginning of our friendship. It seemed to me, even then, that our friendship would never change. Then our Hogwarts letters arrived. We had long before agreed that we would remain together in Hogwarts no matter what, it had been something that Sirius had been reluctant to enter, even back at the age of seven. He was the one that looked somewhat unhappy at the letter, as if something was going to change drastically. The last week before we headed to Hogwarts Sirius was not seen or heard from by any of us. We would learn later that he was afraid of his family rules.

I met Remus Lupin first, running directly into him when I turned to walk to the train away from my parents, my aunt, and my uncle. We both fell to the floor with a tumble. Remus was my second love.

"So sorry," he stuttered, helping me up.

I remember that perfectly. His nervousness had been endearing. I asked him if he had anyone to sit with yet and he answered in negative, I invited him to sit with James, Peter, and me. No one had seen Sirius yet. He readily agreed as if that had been his biggest worry, not making any friends. In time I would learn that it had been one of his worries.

"Where'd you go, Imy?"

Remus was still nervous behind me when we entered the compartment with him pulling his trunk behind him.

"Guys, this is," I said, beginning to introduce him having forgotten that I didn't know his name. "Sorry, what's your name?"

"Remus Lupin."

James and Peter took to him instantly, James telling him everything there was to know about pranking, he was ready to spill all his secrets to anyone willing to listen. James would learn by the end of the year that he had to keep his mouth shut about things.

When Sirius entered the compartment he was surprised to see Remus.

"Who is he?" He asked, taking his seat rudely.

Sirius always had a way with words.

The rest of the year went on without incident, except for that fact that no one knew where Remus disappeared for three nights of every month and why when he came back he looked so sick. I never bought the story that his mom was sick. It was probably at my insistence that we followed him that fateful night in March. Probably the only reason we found out what he was, and the reason we didn't confront him about it until we were on the train on the way home. I had figured it would be easier on Remus this way. I had already begun to think of him as one of us, he was one of us, and that wouldn't change, not this. James was on my side with this as was Sirius but Peter took some convincing. He always was the shy, quiet one with the least amount of courage but he was a Gryffindor.

I guess I recall all of this now because it has been a long way since the age of seven, and now at seventeen I can see how even then this has been a long time brewing. Sirius was always there somewhere in the back of my mind. He was always around, whispering to me, talking, laughing, playing a prank simply because Severus Snape said a snide comment to me. I had never really considered him my big brother or anything like it but I had considered him to be there for me always. I guess James was like the big brother, protecting me like no one but he could. Peter was the one that needed the most help from us and Remus simply needed a family and somewhere to fit in. We were misfits for all that it was worth, all five of us, but no one saw us like that, and that was the thing, wasn't it. No one really knew us. We were such a closed-nit group that no one ever got in even though the countless of girls that Sirius dated or for that matter that James dated tried hard enough. We were that group that Hogwarts would not have been the same without so that in a way it hurt when in spite of everything near the middle of our sixth year a new change began.

It wasn't just that James was still completely in love with Lily Evans. It also wasn't the fact that for the first time ever Remus began dating. It also wasn't that Peter had stopped following us around like a lost puppy. It was more than that. It was the fact that for the first time ever Sirius was Serious, not to use this as a pun, about a girl.

We all had our different things, even at the beginning I had been more interested in books and drawing than pranking though I still condone it and often helped. Remus had been more into studying disregarding everything but still he was a loyal friend. Peter in spite of needing as much help as he could with his school work and being much too interested in sleeping and eating remained close to the group. James and Sirius were too alike to not be together every waking moment, except during certain periods of time that Sirius used to woo innocent girls to become his dates, and I guess James did follow after Sirius in that department as well until he decided to set his eyes on Lily.

The fact that Sirius finally found his "Lily" as Remus had put it scared the hell out of all of us; it had been an unexpected turn of events, especially after Sirius had run away from home.

She was muggle-born girl that up until Sirius started dating her had been unknown to the gossip mongers of Hogwarts. She was smart, to be sure, and seemed to be in all of the NEWTS classes, all the classes I took but had never noticed her in, even though teachers when asked swore that she had been in school with us since first year. James and I hardly could believe it. It was as if she had been wearing some invisibility spell or maybe a cloak like James' until now, and that Sirius had been the one to uncover her. What bothered me the most was that she was just as perfect as I was if even more, at least she seemed to be to the world, just like I seemed to be.

"Do you love her?" James asked the question I had been wondering for weeks, two months into the relationship.

"I don't know." Sirius had seemed truthful.

The answer bothered me, nevertheless. It was the kind of answer you gave someone when you were in the process of deciding whether it really was a yes. In most cases it tended to be a yes within the next few weeks. I watched them closely.

I guess we changed that year, all of us, but we remained together. I guess it's kind of like a married couple out of love. We didn't want to be out of love for each other, in fact we still loved each other as only best friends could but we also needed our space. We needed to see other people and stop pretending that everything was alright when all the time we spent together we found each other doing things alone.

The summer did not bring us together.

I guess I continue my tale because in a way it defines me. They defined me even though the summer pulled us even more apart than ever. We were all doing our own thing, but by the end of the summer I guess things didn't change as much as I thought they had.

Remus broke up with his girlfriend, she found out he was a werewolf and it scared her. Remus did the honorable thing—he was always doing the honorable thing—and broke up with her. Remus was strong enough to deal with it but it came to shock us when Sirius was the one broken from his own breakup but then who ever said that relationships that were begun in your school days would last. He turned to James and I for comfort. James had changed little, his obsession with Lily had grown but other than that he remained the same even though now I was afraid he really was in love with Lily Evans. Peter was back to normal but something had happened to him, something he wasn't sharing with us.

I guess this is what set us back into the normality that had been the previous years, except for that fact that it was around this time that my feelings came to be known by me. That I was in love with my best friend was the biggest tragedy I had ever heard of.

I had four boyfriends, none of them lasting longer than a month at most. I hadn't loved any of them, but Sirius I did love. Sirius I would do anything for. With Sirius it was real. It was more.

And, so, now that I have explained my story so far we should go to where it continues on a dark stormy night in the middle of James' room two days before we went back to Hogwarts.

"Is that your foot?"

"Yes, you idiot, now stop touching it."

I giggled listening to my two best friends. We were back to being a trio for the night. Remus was passed out in Sirius' room and Peter was back at his house as his mom had requested so that in the morning the two of them could floo to his grandmother's.

"So what are we doing tonight?" I asked, probably a stupid question.

I could feel Sirius' 'you know what we're going to do' stare and shivers ran down my arms.

"So truth or dare?" James questioned.

Sirius nodded.

Truth or dare was the game we used to play together when we first became friends, back then it was about nothing more than making the other do some daring thing that would no doubt get the other in trouble. The truths were rarely fun, then, we knew everything about each other and had long before promised that we would tell each other everything. No secrets existed between us then, now I was afraid that the game had become dangerous, a way to hurt each other even more than we had already, when our emotions were on the line, this game was no longer just a game.

"Imy?"

I looked at James who looked mischievously back at me. I hated when he did that because in most cases it often turned out that something bad was going to happen.

"Truth or dare, Imy," James said, smirking at me.

James was malicious, I didn't know what he would make me do if I said dare but would it be worse than my secret affections for Sirius coming out if James did have any idea about those?

"Truth," I said, finally, making up my mind.

James looked put out. Maybe he didn't know anything.

"Have you ever been in love?" James asked, I could see him smirking.

"You know she hasn't," Sirius said before I could answer.

James already knew the answer. I could tell from the way he looked at me.

"Veritaserum, then?" James asked. "To make it much more interesting."

It wasn't a game, far from one. Sirius and I did not answer but James got the bottle anyway and handed it to me. "Just two drops," he informed me.

I pulled out the dropped and tipped my head back before letting two drops of the clear liquid fall into my mouth. I could feel the effects instantly.

"Have you ever been in love?" This time Sirius was the one that asked the question.

The answer slipped from my lips before I could stop it, "yes."

Sirius opened his mouth to ask something else but I stopped him. "James, truth or dare?"

James gave me a strange look before answering, "truth."

I handed him the potion, watching him take the two drops.

"Do you love Lily Evans, truly love her?"

I guess I was being a good friend, I was asking James to not hurt me by asking me to talk about my love life. I had also really wanted to know the answer to that question.

"Yes, I love her."

Sirius was probably the more shocked of the two of us. I had expected his answer.

The game went on, it appeared that James had decided to not hurt me, or maybe he knew nothing. By the time it was well past midnight a bottle of firewhiskey had been brought out and we had all indulged ourselves in sips of it, the burning liquid running down our throats. The game had become even more dangerous, our open tongues now ready to spill secrets.

"What is your most embarrassing moment?" I asked of Sirius.

He turned a dark shade of red, glaring at me before the veritaserum made him answer the question.

"Telling James the real reason Mira and I broke up."

I made to inquire further but James spoke first, asking me what I wanted.

I had been playing it safe for the most part, not taking any dares and somehow managing to get easy questions and getting my companions drunk so that they wouldn't remember their second question but I too had a lot to drink.

"A dare, I think."

It was the wrong choice, perhaps, and even at that moment before James opened his mouth to "dare me" to do something, I knew it.

"I know this might be cruel, perhaps a little selfish of me but I hate when things are unsolved," James announced, walking to the door. "I won't stay, far be it for me to intrude upon anything. Imy, my dear cousin, I dare you to kiss him, to kiss Sirius Black. And perhaps it may be nothing but I like to think it is something. Maybe I'm drunk."

Those were his last words to us for the night before we heard him stumbling down the corridor towards Sirius' room to join Remus in slumber.

"You don't have to, you know," Sirius said, watching me intently. "He's gone. We could just stop playing."

The thing is I wanted to kiss him, and maybe that was the firewhiskey talking or maybe just the fact that I was in love with him, but as I looked at him and he seemed to look at me, waiting for my decision, I inched closer.

Sirius had this kind of smell, one that no one else in the world had. The mixture of his aftershave and his soap perhaps or just his very essence, it was an indescribably good smell and I took it in as I cautiously reached up to touch his cheek, barely brushing my fingers against his pale, warm skin.

"What would you do if I did kiss you?" I whispered.

"Kiss you back, perhaps, Imy," He whispered back.

I rubbed my thumb against his cheek; he leaned into my hand like a dog wanting to be pet by its master. The irony in that wasn't lost to me. I let out a chuckle.

He looked at me strangely before making the first move, pulling me even closer to him so that we were an inch apart.

"Is this just a game anymore, Sirius?"

The rational part of my mind, though most of it was gone, wanted to pull away and run before I got hurt like the other countless girls I had seen crying after Sirius had dumped them, but I doubted he would do that to me and this was only a kiss.

It wasn't only a kiss, not to me. It was more than just a kiss and the single fact that it had come to be because of a game made it so much worse. It was much worse than spin the bottle in second year where Sirius and I had shared our first kiss, granted at the time I hadn't been in love with him. Now I cherished the memory.

"It was never a game, Imy," he responded, before closing the distance.

My mind flashed back to that other game; innocent as we had been there, or as innocent as we had allowed ourselves to be, experimenting with games that we knew could turn dangerous. James had spun first, the bottle pointing to Sirius. We had all excused that one and rather than to give James his turn again, Sirius spun. I remember wondering who it would land on, hoping that maybe Emma would be the lucky recipient, she had been gushing about Sirius to me for the past week. When the bottle pointed at me I stiffened.

"Well come on, I don't bite."

I really did mean that Sirius had a way with words.

He was then, just like he would later, the one that initiated the kiss, his hands holding my face before he pressed his lips to mine.

It was nothing compared to this kiss, the one that would lead to my death. We weren't twelve anymore, wondering about what it would feel like to kiss someone of the opposite sex, we were older, much older and the troubles of our world were beginning to affect us. It was no longer a joke like Sirius asking who the hell Voldemort was to begin with. We all knew who he was now, and upon further reflection we knew that a war was brewing and that we would be part of it.

His kiss was furious, hard, but I still cherished it, I still met him the entire way, and when he stopped kissing me we stayed as close as we could to each other, our hands clasped together.

Sirius helped me stand and we moved farther into the room, he pulled me to sit next to him on the bed, looking at me strangely. We didn't speak.

James would not accept that nothing had happened the next day. The fact that Sirius and I remained in his room for the rest of the night had not been planned, but nothing had happened. Sirius was too much of a good friend for anything of that sort to begin and I would have denied him anyway, as much as I loved him.

"We kissed, that is all," Sirius told his best friend; ignoring the glare I shot him when he shared this with James. "To finish the game of course."

But it hadn't been a game. Not to either of us and we both knew it.

The Hogwarts express looked just the same as every year but to think about it as the last time I would travel to Hogwarts on it made it look completely different. James and Remus said their goodbyes to the rest of us, off to the prefect and head compartments, they'd be back half-way through the trip they promised before running off. Peter had once more disappeared and an awkward silence fell between Sirius and I.

The kiss had not killed either of us, but having our unspoken feelings out for the other to spurn, our hearts to be stomped on did not agree with either of us, so we didn't talk about it. We both had roles to play and I was supposed to be perfect. I couldn't talk about this and wind up broken hearted.

Our compartment was unusually quiet and empty. It was too quiet and too empty. It was a game again between us. Who would break and bring the subject up, and neither of us were budging, maybe this was the reason I loved him. We were too alike to not like each other, and we knew each other so well already.

I was the one to break. I knew it would happen, so had he. We were too predictable.

"We have to talk about it."

I guess I could continue telling you what happened; that the two of us shared with each other everything. I guess I could say that Sirius and I sort of belonged together and we had both known it and had dealt with it differently. Me with my perfection and he with his role as the Casanova of Hogwarts, we had always known all along deep within ourselves who we truly belonged to and I will go as far as to say that Sirius and I were too alike though no one ever saw those sides of us. That is my entire point.

The story of Sirius Black could have been an endless story of partying with a different girl every night, in fact it was for as long as I can remember beginning in our third year, but what no one saw was the fact that I was his best friend, the one that knew of his escapades and somehow always managed to help him out of the messes he would end up in. He was caught snogging in the middle of a classroom once, I was the one that served to make a loud enough distraction for him to get away, not at all bothered by the fact that he was kissing another girl. I hadn't known then that I loved him.

By the end of our seventh year, I guess I cannot possibly end my story at this end, for the story is never ending, like all stories, Sirius and I were the ones that were inseparable. Perhaps James had not found his soul mate when he met Sirius, I had, and I had simply made the wrong judgment. It would have been only a few years before James met his anyway. Lily had finally given into James and they were as happy together as Sirius and I. Remus once went as far as to say that I wasn't Sirius' "Lily", but that Lily was James' "Imy". Only Remus could put things in such a perspective, he was just odd that way.

I could continue on to tell you that I married him, that we were as happy with each other as could be and that in the end we had two kids, that they were beautiful and that to the world we were perfect, but what is perfection anyway? Was my life not perfect because that didn't happen?

I discovered that people ceased to see me as perfect when tragedy struck. It wasn't like I hadn't expected something to happen, in the midst of war, something always happens and it leaves you wondering if all the time you had with someone had only been stolen time. That was all that Sirius and my relationship with him was made out of, stolen time.

I last saw Sirius when he was being dragged off to Azkaban, his already crazed look killing me. His kiss hadn't killed me, his last actions had, and maybe I should have had more faith, expected more of him but I hadn't. I held on to the ring he gave me three days before the Potter's death. Our engagement had seemed such a happy event; neither of us had known that he would end up in Azkaban.

I like to think that my role of perfection ended when people truly saw me for what I was, not because I had fallen in love with a so called murderer, because that had been perfect. Love had been perfect; that state of being in which nothing can go wrong. I knew I would never love another, not like I loved Sirius Black.

I end my story at this point, not telling you the particulars of our life together during that time that we were together, not talking about Harry Potter, and ignoring the fact that my other best friend died with his beloved wife, ignoring that Peter died at the hand of his best friend, ignoring that Remus and I were left the last ones of our group, and that without the others we wouldn't be able to continue our friendship. I'd like to tell you that even after this tragic end something would make me in the end happy but nothing would, not for another twelve years, nearly the same amount of time that Sirius and I had known each other, but even then I would discover that Sirius and I were not meant to be together, not because we were so changed from one another, but because Sirius in his crazed mind died a few years after his big escape, I can't say whether Harry or I suffered more, but then I had that stolen time with him where Harry had only had a small amount of it.

It was ironic how little we had appreciated our time together, how much after the time was gone we wanted to go back and cherish every moment. If I had been perfect, maybe I would have cherished it, but that's the thing; I'm not perfect.

**The End **

**Author's Note: **I hope you have all enjoyed this. Don't usually write one-shots, mostly because every time I try they end up being enormous and no longer considered one-shots so this is my third one-shot and I'm pretty proud of myself. I know I don't really dwell into their lives too much and it is mostly a narration of things but I thought it'd be better this way, mostly because I would have carried on forever otherwise…and I hope everyone liked the character of Imy, so please review and any questions about this fic are welcome and I think that's it.

-Erika (Lupin's Mistess)


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